The Last Empire
The corpse of the Tyrant Sun hung limply in the sky—a sickly white spiderweb of plasma that wrapped around all of Farin, bathing the planet and the entire solar system in the same faint luminescence—not quite day but not quite night. Rem, his shaggy fur cloak hugged close to his chest to keep him warm, stumbled through a barren valley. The thin layer of ice that covered the dirt cracked under the weight of each footstep. A howl echoed through the emptiness. Rem nocked a slim bonewood arrow to his bow, stooping low to the ground and quickening his pace. There had been another with him several hours ago, a second hunter—but he had died. Rem had eaten most of his body—it would be a waste not to. Already, he could feel his companion’s memories jostling around in his head. More importantly, though, the other hunter had been far more experienced than him, especially with the spear—a weapon Rem now knew how to use. Rem tightened his focus, pushed the hunter’s childhood memories to the back of his mind. There would be time to sift through them later—there was danger about. The ground began to shake. In the distance, from the faraway city skyline, one of the great Iron Ships pushed into the purple sky on a plume of fire and white smoke. More than likely it was the space-bound fortress of some Knight, sent off at the command of the High Ruler to find new planets to add to the Last Empire. Or new suns to destroy. "Not destroy," Rem reminded himself, "vanquish." The High Ruler’s plan was as inscrutable as the faint stars themselves, but everything he did, he did for the good of the Faroe people and the Last Empire. But he couldn’t help but wonder—he had heard stories from the ancient times, times before the ascension of the High Ruler those two thousand years ago. In the era of the Tyrant Sun, the stories said that the ground was soft, not frozen and hard, and that plants grew for everyone to eat. There was no hunger, like there was now. "If the High Ruler truly was God, why would he put an end to a thing that had brought so much life? How could he condemn his own people this way?" Rem cautioned himself against impure thoughts such as these. The High Ruler had given Farin law, stability, peace—safety from the corrupting heat of the Tyrant Sun. Boundless advances in technology and science were made possible with the dissolution of nation states and the establishment of the Last Empire. "But why then," a niggling little voice in the back of his head asked, "are we forbidden to use advanced modern medicine, or leave the farms? Why do so many die in the Pits every day, while the Knights feast day and night in their keeps? Why has the High Ruler not left his Moon Palace and set foot on Farin in the last two hundred years?" Again, Rem cautioned himself against doubting his God. He blamed the hunter he ate for his sudden dissonance in ideals. A roar from atop a nearby outcropping cut through Roe’s thoughts. The shape of a six-legged varg—larger than any he has ever seen—could be glimpsed atop a pile of ice and black soil. With the reflexes and training of two lifetimes spent hunting, Rem pulled the bowstring taut and released his arrow, quickly pulling a second from his quiver and breaking into a sprint towards high ground. The varg has broken into a sprint, a lithe and deadly shimmer of black sable, taking effortless leaps over huge swathes of ground. If Rem’s arrow hit it, it didn’t seem to be injured at all. Rem won’t make it. Rem readied his spear with determination, planted his front foot on the ground, and turned on his heel, thrusting at the beast with superb command of his own weapon. But the varg was already in mid-pounce, and while the stab caught it in the midsection, its momentum snapped the flimsy shaft of the weapon, and the beast tumbled on top of Rem, clawing open his throat. Bending over him, the varg opened its mouth slightly. Its teeth were little rubbery fingers that melted through flesh like butter, and they did their work remarkably quickly. Red blood spilled across the ice and seeped its way into the dirt. As Rem slipped into death, his last thoughts were a prayer to the High Ruler that someone—one of his own kind, might by chance find and eat his body, that he might live on in some small way. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Faroe are not tall in stature, usually standing between five and six feet. They are indigenous to the planet of Farin—center world of the Last Empire. They are bipedal and have four fingers on each hand, as well as four toes on each of their feet. They tend to be of slim build and have a range of mottled skin patterns, ranging from anywhere between purple and milk white. They are remarkably similar in appearance to humans, and a Faroe with the right skin tone can easily be mistaken for a human to anyone who does not count their fingers. There are some key differences between the species, though, the most notable being this: any Faroe can eat the body of another Faroe to absorb all their memories and learned motor skills. The effectiveness and relative permanence of this neural transfer depends roughly on the amount of the body that has been consumed. This governs much of how their society is run—when a family member dies, their body is consumed so that their memories can live on. Some Faroe have hundreds of years of ancestral memory chains due to this custom, although this is more common among Knights than among the peasantry. Each Knight is a fierce warrior who has eaten many slain opponents. As nobility, they are allowed access by the High Ruler to the most potent technologies that are kept restricted from the masses: teleportation devices, starfighters, mechanical soldiers and servants, and advanced personal weaponry. Their stomach acids are quite potent, powerful enough to break down any kind of organic matter—hair, chitin, scales, and even bone—they are literally evolutionary disposed to cannibalize each other in this way. There is no organically derived poison or bioweapon that is known to work against them. They have a natural lifespan of around eighty years. Category:Nationbuilder IX: Stationbuilder